Wednesday, 21 January 2015

A few bits of current news to round up in this edition of "Crooked Lines", including the results of the www.flyforcoarse.com competition. But we will start with some encouraging recent pike fishing. Those of you who regularly read the blog and my work in general will know I'm not always a huge fan of twin trebles for pike fishing. They make a right mess of landing nets, jumpers and just about anything else come to think of it, including occasional fingers and (yes, I've said it) pike.

For a while now I've been dabbling with different rigs, but hair rigging using a size 1 or 2 Catmaster hook seems a very good ploy. You can't easily use a huge bait, but with a long baiting needle it's easy to hair rig something like a lamprey section or half a sardine, with a little foam section to gently lift it off the bottom where it won't get lost from view or weeded up (just buy a block of foam and cut it up, rather than being ripped off by one of the tackle companies). This also seems to ensure that the popped up end heads for the throat first, rather than the hook end. I also seem to be using feeders more and more, partly due to the wet winters we are getting and the resulting muddy water. And that is about as technical as I'm going to get outside the realm of a proper article.

The above was a very welcome second on a bitterly cold day of biting wind and murky water. A nice result and not a treble hook in sight. Can the single hook really hold its own you ask? With a smallish bait, there can't be much in it. Unless you use the 19th Century method of virtually waiting until the pike has digested the bait, you will always lose the odd fish. I never, ever delay the strike personally, but it has now been several pike on the trot without loss- until I wrote this sentence and probably jinxed everything.

Seriously though, almost every fish I've had on the singles has been neatly hooked in the scissors and been a piece of cake to unhook. And even if I were to lose the occasional extra fish, isn't this a small price to pay for cutting out not only accidental damage, but the additional time out of water that inevitably follows a thrashing pike and two potentially awkward trebles? Feel free to debate this, but please use words and reasoning rather than bile and excrement. For now though, I'm sticking with singles.

Other experiments are also afoot with flies in 2015, as above with these new "Drop Minnows" intended for either fly or drop shot tackle as takes the user's fancy. So far so good, at least where local perch are concerned. Hopefully my next trip will coincide with nice clear water so I can get the fly rod out and try some further prototypes.

In essence, this process of experimentation is a lot of the fun of fishing. Because where exactly is the fun in doing it the same way every week or just copying someone else? In my own meandering fashion, I enjoy every little test whether it is a new fly or lure to field test, or trying a new method on an old favourite venue. Because apart from the law, regulations printed on pieces of paper or fishery signs, THERE ARE NO FIXED RULES! Enjoy turning over this liberating concept for a few seconds, before you make your 500th trip to your favourite peg with the same set up you used last week. Only robots and morons never deviate from the instruction booklet.

Talking of adventure and experimentation, it has been another cracking year for "Fly For Coarse". While the meat and two veg weeklies continue with headlines such as "CATCH YOUR OWN BODY WEIGHT IN MASSIVE FISH NOW!" or "FREE DISGORGER!" we've had an astonishing year of adventure, surprise catches and novel ideas once again. It was a royal headache for Matt Hayes, John Bailey and myself to split some hugely impressive entries, but the one that squeaked home in the end was Fergus Kelley's metre long grass carp. What a fish to catch on a classic Adams dry fly:

Fergus wins a Turrall goody bag worth over £100 quid, featuring some of their brilliant UV tying materials (superb for pike flies!) and the full range of "Flies for Coarse Fish" in a split cane box.

Meanwhile, in joint second place were rising star Sam Edmonds and another promising young blade Matt Roberts, with a 30lb 12oz pike and 4lb 2oz perch respectively. I know what you're thinking… fly fishing only catches small fish. The contest also produced dace, rudd, chub, carp and even a tench among loads of other catches. Read more about it in the Fishing Magic news roundup here, or better still have a peek at the official website www.flyforcoarse.com

Do also keep an eye out for details of the 2015 contest, with more prize categories, a grand day out and some exciting spoils from our friends at Turrall and Snowbee well worth battling for!

Friday, 9 January 2015

Greetings, fishes and a Happy New Year to all of you. We have a different type of blog this time, written in both English and Polish to describe my recent trip to Poland and to celebrate fishing and the spirit of friendship in both countries.

If Christmas in England is about turkey, port and television, the Polish version is a story of carp, vodka and Church, although not necessarily in that order. Slightly different, yes, but what generous, welcoming hosts the Poles are. If you are ever invited to celebrate with them, say yes but be warned- there is probably no place on earth you will eat and drink more.

Are the stories of Christmas carp true? Absolutely. But the fish are not yanked from a local river but farmed in their thousands. These days the supermarkets sell them on ice- although Christmas is now the only time of year you can still buy them live, and as in times past these fish are sometimes kept in the family bath and few for a few days! Would my British fisherman’s ethics let me eat carp flesh though? More on this later.

It might have been cold in Wroclaw over the holidays, but I still went fishing in the River Odra and Paulina, my girlfriend, was brave enough to join me. The last time we met up with Mateusz Perlinsky was on a mild spring day, but this time it was a much colder trip, fishing for zander.

On route I had to scribble on official looking papers and pay 40 zloty (About £8) for a visitors fishing license. We also stopped at a huge tackle shop, so I could waste more strange currency on jigs for the zander. Never mind, because the prices in Poland are cheap. In the measures important to fishermen, beer is 6-7 zl (about £1.20-£1.40) per pint and a dozen soft lures and jig hooks will set you back less than ten quid.

In biting winds we crossed industrial looking bridges and sticky mud. Mat showed me a great looking spot for winter fishing; a deep junction on the Odra where the water fell dramatically to over 20 ft (7m) deep. We tried to ignore the cold, bouncing the lures across the bottom, but I received only one suspicious nip in three chilly hours. A few teeth marks but no fish on this occasion, but it was great to see Mat.

Then came the great carp tasting. How would I feel about this? I could imagine a muddy flavour, inferior to the other superb Polish dishes: pirogi (small dumplings) beetroot soup and bigos (a slow cooked stew of cabbage, smoked sausage and whatever the cook can find). The reason for eating carp is down to religion as well as Christmas tradition. On Christmas Eve in Poland, it is forbidden for Catholics to eat meat or drink alcohol. That festive carp is a convenient loophole though.

Carp aside, the English and the Poles do have many similarities at Christmas. One is that they love a drink. The main difference are the sizes of the measures. A single whisky or vodka in the UK is a stingy measure compared to a Polish helping. Friendly people, but never try to outdrink a Pole!

Perhaps I wondered what I had been drinking later in the week, when my second fishing trip was with a man who might be my Polish alter-ego. Arek Kubale is a thirty-something fishing writer, editor and photographer with a similar taste for odd fly fishing. He also shares the beard and a love of alternative rock music.

The weather was bitterly cold, so we spent part of the day drinking coffee, destroying some amazing local cakes and talking fishing. Wroclaw has some fascinating urban fishing, it turns out. There are good sized chub, pike and asp here on some curious canals. One of them would look quite fishy- if it contained any water! Arek explains that it was recently drained and repaired. A minor tragedy because he openly admits that he moved to this exact area for the canal fishing (well, that and the awesome local cake shop).

The other pleasant surprise is that young Polish anglers are now predominantly catch and release, in spite of the older heads. “You still get a few old folk who think just about any bream or horrible tasting fish is edible, if you only stew or smoke it long enough,” Arek explains, “but for the young, catch and release is becoming normal.”

The fishing is bitterly tough with a pike fly rod, although I’m intrigued by strange urban waters and shoals of bleak that sometimes dance at the surface, even in these below freezing conditions. We enjoy a few casts, and it is nice seeing a pike fly dance in the cold water. But nothing is willing to bite, so it’s home time.

I would love to have caught a winter pike or zander from one of the city’s cold canals, but what can I say? The truth doesn’t always make the perfect story or a great ending. But I will certainly return to visit my friends in Poland in warmer times. Contrary to myth here is some fascinating, undervalued fishing here. Asp are a unique predatory fish; in other parts you also find rivers with huchen: a giant, carnivorous relative of the salmon. Thanks go to my Polish friends and my hosts, Paulina and her family. I will return when it is possible to feel warm without the aid of vodka.